


smoke and sunset ;

by bisexualklausmikaelson



Category: The Originals (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 13:50:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15438423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualklausmikaelson/pseuds/bisexualklausmikaelson
Summary: Step by step, one foot after the other, it’s as if he’s learning how to walk again.“Hayley,” Klaus speaks first, breathless.She turns, with the look of youth, an inviting smile gone from her lips. She raises her brow at him, with nothing but a puzzling look on her face. She takes her sunglasses off to get a better look at him.  “I’m sorry,” she says. “Have we met before?”





	smoke and sunset ;

**Author's Note:**

> au future fic/ or hayley comes back to life but has lost all her memories of the mikaelson family/ or hayley gets elijah’s season 5 storyline lol.

― 

He’s on vacation in Paris.

Klaus Mikaelson hasn’t taken a day off in years. Not since he’s become single dad of the decade and joined the school’s PTA (on Caroline’s request of course, with her sweet voice reminding him that it’s what Hayley would have wanted). He’s even showing up with gourmet cookies at the summer bakesale, dressing to the nines to chaperone school dances – heck he’s even got Alaric patting him on the shoulder. 

Almost as if he’s forgotten that once, a lifetime ago, Klaus was trying to actively ruin him and his loved ones.

So anyway, he’s been good. Good enough to take himself on a vacation to his favourite city he thinks.

(He unpacks and settles in to his beautiful hotel room by the beach. Klaus lies on the soft bed and, for the first time in years, he falls asleep).

― 

He wakes up in the afternoon (after thirty-two straight hours of sleep), to his siblings blowing up his phone, no less. 

You’ve reached Klaus Mikaelson, as you’ve probably concluded, I can’t get to the phone right now. Leave me a message and I’ll call you back.

He let’s them all go to voicemail – Nik it’s me, where are you? Are you off on another one of your killing sprees again? If so, could you please hurry it up already, Marcel and I still need your help picking out the venue for the wedding. Call me back. Rebekah.

He clicks, next message.

Klaus – pick up the damn phone. Keelin and I still need to confirm you as the kids babysitter tonight – we’re going on a date for the first time in years and the twins are really looking forward to go pottery painting with their favorite uncle. Hurry the hell up. Freya.

Click.

Hey, it’s Josh. You know, the used-to-be human now vampire that you like tortured non-stop and made my life a living hell? Yeah? Remember me now? Anyway, Marcel’s been asking about you. Can you please answer him? I’m tired of his freak-outs. Thanks.

Click.

Brother, ‘Lijah’s being incessant with the calls lately, could you please end whatever fit you’re throwing this time around and just reply to him already? It’s Kol by the way, don’t bother calling me back. I’m not interested in hearing from you. Call ‘Lijah.

Klaus rolls his eyes – he definitely wasn’t answering that one.

He flops back in bed sighing, he wonders if that little coffee place by the bistro is still open.

― 

He sits by the table near the door and it’s like he’s been taken back in time.

Café Roberto is the same – old books left on each table with not much care, mismatched mugs, well-loved plates, mason jars with candle lights scented with lavender. It had not changed at all.

Klaus pulls out his sketch book, the one Hope had given him on his most recent birthday. At least she knew where he was, she’s all that matters to him anyway. His siblings, New Orleans, Mystic Falls be damned.

(It doesn’t take him long to catch the dark eyes of a young woman. She’s a pretty little thing, with her gaze on his neck – licking her lips as if she’s savoring something sweet. Mangoes, tangerine nectar on a hot day, sticky and wet with desire. She reminds him of a wolf, predatory with her sights set on her prey.

As he was saying. His neck. Her eyes.

They’re looking into his now, just as they inevitably do.

She disappears. He swears, he feels like he’s seen a ghost).

― 

A few days later, he sees her again.

He’s out on a blood binge – midnight snack if you will. And he’s a mess, plagued by tears and death. Her face, he hasn’t seen that same pair of wolfish grey-green eyes, powdered pink lips, in god damn years. Although, there isn’t a day where he doesn’t think of her words. Where he doesn’t read her letters.

But her face…makes him lose his balance.

(This is her:

She’s far away from him, far enough not to notice him. So she leaves – with fang marks left on broken necks. He’s half-surprised she doesn’t come up to him and knock him out for being such a terrible example for their daughter).

― 

The third time, he’s at the beach.

And a hundred years of living hasn’t changed her much. His opinion of her is the same. She is exquisite – dark-hearted, a survivor at best. It be incredible to think that he’d finally run away, that he was, for once, untraceable. But, as fate would have it, destiny did not work that easily.

Step by step, one foot after the other, it’s as if he’s learning how to walk again. 

“Hayley,” Klaus speaks first, breathless.

She turns, with the look of youth, an inviting smile gone from her lips. She raises her brow at him, with nothing but a puzzling look on her face. She takes her sunglasses off to get a better look at him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Have we met before?”

The original hybrid’s eyes widen, his mouth waiting to drip open. He thinks, that maybe, she’s just pulling his leg. She’s supposed to be dead for Christ’s sake.

“Yes,” he blurts out, uncontrolled and lost. “Yes, we have,” Klaus repeats, unaware of the consequences behind his actions.

She looks at the sand between her toes, then, she looks back at him.

“Are you sure?”

― 

It’s been far too long since he’s last seen her. Even though Hope truly does resemble her mother far too much. Still, this situation has the oddest effects on Klaus. He finds himself at a loss for words. He’s been trying to run from anything that reminded him of any semblance of Hayley Marshall.

And yet, here she is, sitting right across from him.

He wanted to leave his past only to find out that he will be forever haunted by it. Her smile is like a light he’s long forgotten. He feels the palpitations in his dead heart; an organ he hasn’t had much use for recently. Somehow, she’s breathing life into him without even laying a finger on him. He’s on his third meeting with her. She studies the rich looking dinner that he so generously paid for.

“I apologize again,” Hayley tells him, and Klaus wishes that her words hurt less. They don’t come from her, they come from a girl who now sees him as a stranger. “I should’ve remembered you, I presume we must’ve been close.”

He sighs, as the memories are stalling inside his head. “More than you know, love,” he breathes, slowly. Something important was stolen from her, this much he knows. “You said you had…an accident?” Hopeless beyond repair, unable to find the right way to make the conversation flow smoothly enough to transition in to a more serious topic – Klaus simply finds himself lost in her gaze.

He’s too aware, someone had granted her artificial memories. “A few years ago, my car crashed. I suffered from a bit of memory loss. I was told some things might never come back to me,” she looks like she actually believes it all. She’s torn and broken.

He knows the look on her face all too well. It’s way too familiar. She’s been this sad little thing her entire life. Could he really be responsible to be the one to break her once again? Could Klaus really handle that? Could he?

She sighs.

In that brief moment, he decides that he hates it when she’s sad.

“So Klaus, was it?” her doe-eyes and soft skin catch him and he loses his train of thought. It’s been far too long since he’s heard his name coming from her voice. “Tell me, we’re we friends?”

Unmistakably, he nods his head.

“Just friends?” She surprises him, once again. However, before he starts to delude himself, he finds that she is just making sure. After all, anything was possible, they could’ve happened. He’d think the same if their roles were reversed and if, all of a sudden, a beautiful person came to him, claiming to know him and bought him dinner.

He doesn’t take advantage of the moment. Klaus nods again instead. “Yes,” he repeats. “Just friends.”

― 

Klaus Mikaelson is a logical person, under the right circumstances anyway. He lets her believe what she wants. It’s for the best, something extremely terrible must have happened for any of this to ever be possible. He knows he needs to stop calculation and re-calculating this matter. He also knows that the only people who could possibly rearrange another hybrid’s memories had to be one of his siblings.

Though, when she smiles at him, he decides to refrain himself from contacting his family.

You’re not supposed to question miracles, you don’t mess with fate. Or else, he fears she might just be taken away all over again. 

“You should tell me who I was,” she talks to him almost everyday. He’d think she’d stop contacting some man who could quite possibly be a stranger to her. Still, Klaus understands one thing; Hayley is still the same, even if she does not remember who she used to be. She is a curious thing and it’s only natural that she is intrigued about the part of her which she does not know about.

The original hybrid is the only key to opening the doors that are closing her memories.

He feels her hand shaking his arms so he’ll focus his attention back on her. Hayley’s unaware that, even in crowded room, he’d still have his entire focus on her and her alone. “Tell me, what were like? The things we talked about? How we met? Perhaps it might jog something.”

Ironically, he laughs. She always did have so much endless hope in him. “Why are you so insistent, sweetheart?”

She pouts and looks at the sand again. And then, her eyes shift to the footprints they both left far behind. The tide comes in to wash them away. “You act as though I was important to you – it makes me feel guilty.”

Klaus finds that her memory is too good to be erased at all. She should know him, she should know everything. In fact, she deserves to know it. He owes it to her – he knows he does, for all she did for him.

He looks her in the eyes. He pats her on the head.

“Your memory will come back to you in due time,” he tells her instead.

― 

This is her:

She learns not to bother him too much about it. She learns that Klaus is a monster too, just like her. That he likes to write on his spare time – that he wears the same old sweater far too often. He’s sarcastic, but he also laughs at his own jokes sometimes. He’s wise and very knowledgeable about the world. He is a cultured man, despite his appearances. He likes his eggs sunny-side up and sips noisily when he drinks his English tea. He likes biscuits on the side.

This is him:

He learns that she hates math. Not just because she’s horrible with numbers; mostly because math is everywhere and she hates being haunted by things like that. He learns that she loves to bake, even though human food is not essential for her. She makes his eggs sunny-side up. Her cakes always end up tasting way too sugary sweet for anyone’s liking. He learns that she had the worst taste in music. That she counts the starts when she can’t sleep. The she likes to take long walks on the beach.

She used to take them alone.

He walks by her side, letting his hand brush against hers.

― 

The guilt starts to get to him.

― 

He meets Marcel once.

And only once.

“Rebekah compelled her.”

Klaus doesn’t know how to feel right now. His son has always been the tragic hero type – and of course it was her, his own sister had been lying to him. Then again, he hasn’t exactly been fair to her, with how he kept interfering with her love life, maybe she’d finally had enough.

Maybe she’d decided to betray him after all.

“What else could we do? We had to hide her Klaus, she was in danger.”

He feels his insides eating at his organs. The questions come too quick and all at once. It’s like termites crawling on his skin. His eyes are on fire. The guilt is tearing him apart and then, the face of this man, his own damn son and everything he sacrificed for her. For a brief moment, Klaus realizes how wrong he is. Hayley is not his for the taking.

“She doesn’t even remember her own daughter,” He grits between his teeth.

Marcel puts on a façade. He has always worn a mask behind those round eyes of his. His smile is weak, even a child can see the artificiality in it. Nonetheless, he is unselfish underneath that demeanour of the tragic hero.

“She’s happier this way. You know she is, she never wanted to be a Mikaelson!”

His words – they strike something in Klaus. He knows that Marcel is not wrong. He granted Hayley a life of normality, the kind she had always wanted. He recalls her dead parents, her dead husband, how she lost practically everything – how all she’s ever known is pain and turmoil

Still, Klaus knows that it is not his place to speak. He doesn’t tell her like he had planned. 

He runs instead.

― 

And one night, he ends up alone, cold, twisted, spun fast. The city lights hang high, framing his body with its unfamiliar glow. An alarming question he cannot answer; what do I do? What do I do? Two voices inside his head argue with one another; tell her, tell her and you’d be a fool to say anything right now.

She lies beside him with the traffic light shining red. She used to have two options; stay or go. She hates this decision even though she’s never had to make it before. Or at least, she doesn’t remember making any such decisions ever in her life. Still, she picks one and hopefully, she picks the right one. She finds him because he’s stupid, he didn’t call or text her. But he gave her his address, and then she figured out that it was the wrong one. She tracked him down. And she walked in to his life without warning.

Just like the last time.

She looks to him and it feels like salvation.

“You’ll tell me when I’m ready, won’t you?”

“Yes.”

Bared pearly white teeth, wild eyes, nostalgic smile…she has eternity a head of her to be able to figure things out. Her fingers fill the spaces in between his own. “It will hurt,” Klaus feels the need to warn her.

She nods. “I know,” her fingers stiffen. “But I think that, I’ll be okay.”

The original hybrid can’t help but be in disbelief.

She smiles at him instead. “After all, I’ll always have you.”

Klaus looks to her, furrowing his brows. “What makes you say so?”

She rolls her eyes, “I found you, didn’t I?”

And he wonders what that says about the first time that he was able to find her.

― 

(In the end, they watch the sunset by the beach and it’s the year 3005 - he looks back at her and kisses her seldom sweet. She throws her head back in laughter as their daughter catches them sharing this intimate moment. He rolls his eyes, guess some things never change).

―


End file.
